Wilkinson drumming up support
B.C. Liberal party leadership candidate Andrew Wilkinson was probably the only law student in Canada during his time at Dalhousie University whose part-time job was saving lives.
While his classmates worked to pay their student expenses as waiters or store clerks, he was putting his medical skills to use on weekends as an emergency room doctor.
In the courtroom or in a busy hospital room, Wilkinson learned to think quickly on his feet and come up with logical strategies to solve problems – work skills he plans to lean on heavily as he attempts to bring the Liberals back into power running the province.
The 60-year-old MLA for VancouverQuilchena, who was born in Australia and grew up in Kamloops, spoke to a group of about 100 party supporters at a Prince George hotel Saturday afternoon, part of a nine-city, 48-hour tour to drum up support for his candidacy in the leadership vote, set for Feb. 1-3.
“I know how to get stuff done in government,” he said. “I’ve lived and worked all over British Columbia, I’ve been a doctor, a lawyer, a deputy minister, a minister of the Crown in three different roles, I think I’ve got the skills and experience to do this.
“I’m a pretty gutsy, focused, direct person. Being direct and hard-nosed is what we need in the legislature, someone who is prepared to stand up to John Horgan from Day 1 and make them look weak and ineffective. We cannot have a leader in there who is learning on the job, it’s not going to work. I’ve got what it takes.”
Wilkinson promised to abolish the income tax on small family businesses that takes two per cent of net income to encourage employment and expansion of those community businesses. He wants tutoring of students to be tax deductible and said doctors should be booking appointments and renewing prescriptions online to save medical costs.
He spoke in support of Shell’s proposed liquid natural gas project for Kitimat to be decided later this year and said if elected he would continue to push for pipeline infrastructure and continued development of the Site C dam project to attract respon- sible investment.
“We’re not going to be like the NDP and just block things for the sake of it or listen to the squawkers in our society who think development is terrible,” Wilkinson said. “This is a concept that’s caught hold in Vancouver and is unfortunately spreading around the province of British Columbia because it’s way too easy to come up with excuses or reasons to say no. We need to be the party that’s prepared to say yes‚ in terms of responsible investment.”
He was critical of the NDP’s decision to drop the toll on the Port Mann Bridge and said it’s not right that taxpayers who don’t use the $4.5 billion bridge are now being forced to pay for it, but it would not be possible politically to reverse it.
Wilkinson preached fiscal responsibility, saying he has a plan for a balanced budget that won’t bankrupt future generations. He said he’s the only one of the six candidates to map out a three-year itemized plan for government spending.
“We do not spend our kids‚ or grandkids‚ money on things we want to consume today,” he said. “If you want to have a fancy social program, that’s great, we’ll do it as soon as we can afford it, but we’re not going to spend our money in advance and then dump a bunch of debt on them later on. We do not want deficits unless there’s some catastrophe like the 2008 financial meltdown.
“We run balanced budgets because that’s the responsible thing to do for our generation and for the next generation. Some of my colleagues in this race are losing sight of that and they’ve decided that this should be an auction and they’re going to bid on the biggest, most expensive social program they can dream up and that’s going to be the wave of the future for our party. I disagree, we cannot get into a bidding war with the NDP to see who can spend public money the fastest. You cannot set up a program without the corresponding revenue.”
Only B.C. Liberal party members as of Dec. 29, 2017 are eligible for the leadership vote, a preferential ballot online or by telephone which asks each voter to rank their choice of candidate one through six.
We cannot have a leader in there who is learning on the job, it’s not going to work.
— Andrew Wilkinson